Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday February 02, 2012 @09:13AM
from the post-primary-burning-bush dept.

hondo77 writes with an excerpt from The Daily "'Mother Nature claimed one of her oldest living specimens (Monday) in a freak fire that destroyed a 3,500-year-old bald cypress tree towering over central Florida. Known as "The Senator," or simply "The Big Tree," the hollowed-out majestic timber, standing at 118 feet tall, ignited before dawn. Firefighters watched helplessly as the oldest tree east of the Mississippi — and the fifth oldest in the world — blazed and then collapsed in a heap of flaming embers.' The fire likely started by 'either a weeks- old lightning strike that smoldered until combustion occured, or friction caused by buffeting winds that ignited a spark and erupted in flames.'"

I think it would also disagree with the article title... A tree burning down is as much "dying of natural causes" as someone "dying from an allergic reaction" to lead, after being shot 6 times in the head.

In this case, since the investigation found the fire was caused either by lightning strike or some strange circumstance (not arson) - it would be more like dying from an allergic reaction to bee stings. Still relatively natural.

Heroin is a natural plant, so an OD is natural causes by that logic. I believe natural causes is supposed to imply the body just wearing out on it's own and not caused by outside stimulants. Getting struck by lightning is pretty equally lethal for trees and humans alike. But I've never seen a death certificate attribute being struck by lightning a natural cause.

Are you suggesting that a knife, made from materials that came from the earth, is not natural?
What about bullets?
it's all a line-drawing game. In reality, there is no such thing as "unnatural", unless you are a believer in the supernatural. However, human beings and their inventions, processes, and affects are considered to be either a part of nature or apart from nature depending on the current agenda at hand.

In Florida? Are you serious? Does anyone else realize that unless there's a hurricane Florida (especially central Florida) is basically a dead zone for winds [anl.gov]. That's not to say a freak wind storm couldn't occur but I've lived in some pretty windy places and never heard of a fire started by buffeting winds. Lightning, yes. I've googled for it, can someone point me to evidence of this phenomena actually happening? Having tried to get a spark or start fire by rubbing two sticks together, I can tell you that it would indeed by a freak occurrence if wind did just that.

My best guess is that it would be a localized wind pattern caused by a hill, valley, etc or even buildings if its anywhere near a city. it doesn't take much. Combine it with exceptionally dry air and it wouldn't take much for static electricity to start arcing. If there's any source of flammable gases such as hydrogen or methane beign stuck in the tree, it would take that much less of a spark to ignite.

15% of us die of accidents, violence or suicide in our 80 year lifespans. Eliminating all natural causes of death would only extend our lives so much, unless we practiced a culture of extreme safety. (This has been the theme of many scifi stories about immortals.)
Some trees may essentially immortal, but suffer from weather or animal trauma etc. Almost nothing is alive older than 10K years.

Florida is supposed to be subtropical with a relatively wet climate, but at the moment the place seems bone dry. Many wetlands have simply dried up and people fear that even most 'gator holes will not be deep enough for the reptiles to survive any significant frosts (the poor critters look pretty skinny as it is). Therefore, I guess it's not totally surprising that parts of the forest seem to be going up in flames spontaneously. When I lived there as a kid in the 60s and 70s, drought was never an issue, but now it has been for more than the past decade. To me, this is yet another strong sign that, climatologically, we live in a changing world.

I like how the damn article refers to this tree being majestic but then doesn't even feature a photo of the tree. Instead they present the reader with three useless photos.

In this day and age it's inexcusable for a news site to not feature big, quality photos. It took me all of 5 seconds to do a search online and find a good photo of the tree. You mean to tell me the so-called journalist who wrote this article couldn't have done the same? And then get some intern to get in touch with the rights-holder for permission to run it?

Actually, there's a good answer for that: One of the really fulfilling and profounding affirming activities for nerds to engage in on a tech / "news for nerds" site is to complain about articles that don't fit that profile. But the problem is that if there never were any irrelevant articles, nobody would have anything to complain about, and thus we would have a compromised experience. It's paradoxical, but everything seems to be going according to plan.

I read the article, and totally missed that. Kind of an interesting example of conditioning. As soon as I saw the blue email link after the conclusive paragraph, my brain basically said "ok, article is over" and stopped reading. My brain probably assumed the rest of the text was the usual "other thigns you may be interested in" cruft you tend to find.

People interested by that may also be interested to know the demise of the former oldest living thing in the world, the Prometheus Tree [wikipedia.org], which a graduate student cut down so he could count the rings.

While I agree it maybe doesn't belong on Slashdot, I actually live about 5 minutes from the park where this tree was and would take my kids there to see this tree. Pretty magnificent. So, I at least find it cool to see it on/. even if it doesn't "really" belong here. Also, disappointed to see it go. I don't know if my kids were old enough to really remember seeing it from the last time we went there. I had been meaning to get back there, but, you know, who expect a 3500 year old tree to be suddenly gone. Also, they now suspect arson and not natural causes as originally thought.

I saw lots of amazing perspective shifting stuff while getting dragged around on vacation by my parents as a kid.. and I don't remember most of it. At a certain age, stuff like this means nothing to most people.

Kinda like how stuff that put me to sleep in school has turned into a serious interest many years later. Sounds really stupid, but it was actually a jaw dropping realization that I could actually go to a museum on my own accord.. no bus or permission slips or anything required..

A legitimate question. With a reasonable answer. While I live really close to this park, there are several in the area. As a playground there are other parks in the area that my kids prefer and so we go there more often. It's been maybe 2 years since we have been to that park. My oldest is now almost 9, so I'm sure he remembers going there, but I don't know if he really remembers the tree. My daughter just turned 5. I'm sure she doesn't remember going there.

Methuselah, believed to be about 4,800 years old. It's a species of pine tree somewhere in California. The exact location is kept a secret. This is believed to be the oldest tree still alive.Most of the other oldest trees still living are giant sequoia scattered around California. I think Canada, Australia and Chile also have a few trees that were centuries old when Greek democracy was new.

Also, someone just pointed out to me that they article actually lists the other 4 trees.. cleverly disguised as "further reading" cruft after the authors email. The thing about the one in California being kept secret is kinda neat though (and not mentioned in the article)! Canada isn't mentioned, but I've seen some _huge_ trees in BC.. wouldn't surprise me if one of them was comparable.

Methuselah, believed to be about 4,800 years old. It's a species of pine tree somewhere in California. The exact location is kept a secret. This is believed to be the oldest tree still alive.

Methuselah is a bristlecone pine. And there's a pretty good reason for the secrecy. The article mentions the fear of vandalism. But in the case of the bristlecones, something worse happened. In 1964, there was another one nicknamed Prometheus that was believed to be the oldest tree. The US Forest Service sent a guy in with a chainsaw to cut it down so they could verify its age. It turned out to be over 4900 years old. No older bristlecones have been found. Other forestry people were sufficiently outraged by this that it turned into a standard textbook-level warning, and people who study the oldest bristlecones refuse to report their locations, to protect them from the Forest Service as well as from common vandals.

Actually, there are a number of plants that aren't trees that are known to be older, but their living parts are all young. The textbook example is the creosote bush, which sends up offshoots around its edges, and then the central parts die off. This produces "creosote rings" that spread out across the landscape. A few have been found whose oldest remnants are dated to over 11,000 years. But the living parts are only a few centuries old.

The question "What's the oldest living thing?" turns out to be trickier to answer than you might expect. There are more than one way to define a "living thing", and there are several ways to measure age.

In 1964, there was another one nicknamed Prometheus that was believed to be the oldest tree. The US Forest Service sent a guy in with a chainsaw to cut it down so they could verify its age. It turned out to be over 4900 years old. No older bristlecones have been found. Other forestry people were sufficiently outraged by this that it turned into a standard textbook-level warning, and people who study the oldest bristlecones refuse to report their locations, to protect them from the Forest Service as well as from common vandals.

I know it's "just" a tree, and I'm not one to go cavorting about with greenpeace and whatnot, but wtf? What kind of stupidity is that- I can't believe they did that. The thing was close to 5,000 years old and they just killed it out of curiosity?
Anything that lasts that long deserves some respect.

It's very hard to determine the exact age of a tree that old, especially while its still alive.

There's also debate about what constitutes a tree. For example, Pando is a clonal colony of quaking aspen. While the individual trees (or stems if you want to get into the biology) may only live for a century or so, the colony itself is estimated around 80,000 years old. Clonal colonies like this could be considered biologically immortal.

While there have certainly been a couple "WTF is this doing on Slashdot" stories over the past couple weeks, I would say this falls in well with nerd news. If a 3,500 year old tree had been discovered an article would rightfully make it's way here. 3,500 year old tree burns down deserves the same. It is scientifically interesting. I also find it ironic that your post is really just flamebait.

Mentioned near the bottom of the article's page is a group of 8000 year old trees discovered in Sweden in 2008. This makes them well older than the religious nutcase claim that the universe is about 6000 years old. Thus the article is well within Slashdot's flamebait threshhold, and belongs here.

Those trees are clones of the same ancient root system. For a fascinating read, look up the wiki article on the Pando clonal colony of quaking aspens - they've estimated the root system to be 80,000 years old and covers 106 acres!

'Course, better to not rile up the nutcases on the age of these things. If somebody really wants to believe in something, you won't change their mind with mere factual observations...

Its "news for nerds" transportation strikes happen all the time, unless there is something really unusual about yours in Halifax, its not news for nerds and outside of Halifax were people might be effected its not even news.

A tree catching fire would not be news either except this one is among the oldest in the world! That makes it pretty unusual and therefore news worthy. So it meets the news part of the criteria. Lets see how it does on the nerd part!

Not only that, but a smoldering weeks-old lightning strike or heat from friction by the wind! A fascinating 3500 year old tree is destroyed in a fascinating way. My nerd juices are certainly flowing...

I have never understood these complaints. If a story generates a lot of comments and discussion, then whether or not you or some other people feel that it "belongs" on slashdot is irrelevant - it has been found interesting by enough people in the slashdot community to warrant further discussion. Stories about some really niche piece of technology that you would probably say are the heart and soul of slashdot are the ones that generate ~30 comments and quickly fade into oblivion. Interestingly you can usu

Some of us science geek/nerd types are actually biology/botany nerds. This is definitely in the "stuff that matters" category for us. Computers exist to do plant synecology simulations and model plant community migrations in geologic time.

Now that the tree is dead, the question becomes, will there be anything left we can use to study its rings to build our scientific knowledge of changes in the past 3500 years. Unfortunately, the story itself does not cover this angle.

I'd consider the combustion start method(s) interesting from a technical perspective. I honestly wasn't aware that wind friction can set a tree on fire. OR that a week old lighting strike can do that as well.